Attila Csikós (1942–2017) ▪ Photo: László Lugosi Lugo / MMA

Attila Csikós passed away

Regular member of MMA, architect, set and costume designer as well as life member and master artist of the State Opera House, Attila Csikós passed away after a lingering illness on 8 February in his 75th year of age. MMA considers his passing as losing one of its own.
Attila Csikós finished his studies in architecture in 1967 at the University of Art and Design in Budapest. After working as an assistant lighting and set designer at the József Attila Theatre between 1960 and 1962, he moved on to the University Theatre in 1963, where he worked as a set and costume designer. For ten years starting in 1965 he was the assistant set designer at the Bayreuth Festival. From 1968 and 1979 he was the studio's head lighting and acting head set designer at the Hungarian State Opera. His first set design for the Opera House was made in 1969 for Verdi's Il trovatore. For the Opera House alone he developed the set designs for nearly 80 opera and ballet productions, including Madama Butterfly, Der Zigeunerbaron, Adriana Lecouvreur, Aida, Bánk bán, Scheherazade, The Sleeping Beauty, The Taming of the Shrew and Giselle. In 1983 he became set designer at the National Theatre. Since 1968 he worked at a number of theatres both in Budapest and other places in Hungary, and was often invited to work at theatres abroad as well, including stints in Munich, Vienna, Frankfurt, Paris, Bordeaux, Berlin, Rome, Verona, Trieste, Graz, Basel, Helsinki, Savonlinna, Lisbon and Santiago de Chile. Between 1989 and 2005 he was chief set designer for the Hungarian State Opera. He designed the German exhibition pavilion at Expo 2015 in Aichi, Japan and the castle restaurant for the German pavilion at Expo 2010 in Shanghai. He won the Mari Jászai Award in 1990, the Gusztáv Oláh Commemorative Plaquette in 1998 and the Kossuth State Award in 2001.
February 17, 2017